


In A Name

by cavendished (noodlevampire)



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: F/F, Porn with Feelings, also sorry for the fucked up hyphens but i wrote this on google docs, croix is emotionally constipated, i accidentally inject my work with 5000000000 metaphors part 2, i got fed up with people mispronouncing croix's name so i wrote a fic for it, plus some other headcanons I have so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 23:05:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16229159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlevampire/pseuds/cavendished
Summary: There's something about a name that encompasses the whole of a person -- whether it be given at birth or chosen in a moment of epiphany. Croix Meridies is torn with conflicted feelings about her name -- something grandiose and incredible, larger than herself and impossible to pronounce -- until a certain red-haired witch comes along.





	In A Name

**Author's Note:**

> Croix:  
> It is generally pronounced one of two ways, depending upon your location.  
> In the US, it is pronounced "croy", to rhyme with "soy", or "toy".  
> In the rest of the world, it is pronounced "kwah" or "quah", with the "kw" sound coming from the back of the throat, in the Gallic manner.  
> Since croix is French for "cross", the correct pronunciation would generally be "kwah" or "quah".

A name encompasses the whole of a person, a symbol of who they represent. It can be whispered in the soft intimacy of the night, or yelled in the anguish of the day; screamed in the passion of the twilight hours between light and dark. To witches, a name meant heritage, a living reminder of years of magic history and lineage. Some people find themselves at home in their names, and others are born into it. Her name had always been a subject of issue, some intangible thing haunting her like a spectre of expectation. Croix had a hard time coming to terms with her name. Southern Cross -- a religious connotation associated with the ancient witches and constellations of the past -- felt unfitting for someone like her, always looking to the north, ahead to the future. Despite her best attempts to ignore the jibes and snickers of the other students, Croix often found herself at the butt of many jokes surrounding her name -- it was something antiquated and unique, isolating her from the Hannah's and the Sarah's of Luna Nova. Top student, Croix Meridies. Italian student from north of Florence.

Even the teachers found themselves mispronouncing it, as if her name was something hard and unpleasant they had found in their food. The grate of chalk on a board. Hesitantly, for the first couple months, she would attempt to correct their butchering, only to be received with incredulous stares, or, in Professor Pieces's case, a suitable nickname. (The first time someone called her “beta” out of class she hexed them so badly they were in the infirmary for a week.) By the end of first year she had gotten into the habit of answering before her name was called, an immediate raise of the hand and an answer -- no one else had the confidence to answer correctly anyway -- to stave off the inevitable chorus of giggles at being called “Crocs" for the twelfth time that year. For a year she kept a running tally of all the names in her head: _crocs_ , _croy_ , _croiks_ , _cross_ , even the cacophony of syllables of _kuruwa_ from the Asian students. Her own name sounded foreign to her ears; a sound she was forced to endure twisted beyond her memory. Not even her roommates bothered to correct themselves, barely speaking to her except for academic assistance or partnership in some school event. She was cold, aloof, distant: a constellation unreachable in its position in the sky. Although she had excelled as the top student, she was the least popular girl by the end of the year. After the summer was over, she dreaded her return.

Second year was no different -- the same teachers, same awful noises constructing her name, different classes --  and she increasingly felt the urge to go to the top of the New Moon Tower and fling herself off it. _Advanced Magical Ethics_ and _Sociocultural Witch Anthropology: A Study of Indigenous Witchcraft_ brought with it the discordant voices of new professors, in which Croix gave up by the third week and began correcting them with a different pronunciation of her name each time.

The freshman class had come with the same bustle and commotion of any new school year, fresh young faces unsure yet eager to prove themselves to both their teachers and their classmates. Croix had navigated their antics deftly and effortlessly, ignoring the cries of help raised from puberty-laced voices in the early hours of the library. Scurrying around like cockroaches, they invaded her areas of solitude: the Jennifer Tree, the far end of the broom field, the secret and intimate corners of the library. She’d gone almost a full year uninhibited by the burden of helping frightened freshmen until she ran into _her_.

She had heard about the bastard child of magic, Chariot du Nord. A witch who had big dreams to dilute the sanctity of magic to some _cheap party trick_ to make people _happy_. It was amusing at best, hearing the whispers and rumors in the hall swirling about someone other than herself. For once in her academic career the comments and jeers about her name and her interests were blissfully absent; yet it seemed unfair to the mystery girl, someone she had seen sneak out on the fields after curfew to practice spells and charms later into the night than even Croix herself. She wanted nothing to do with the girl who managed to attract trouble like an industrial magnet.

They had met purely on accident, a blip in the vast cosmic timeline of Luna Nova. A collision on the bannister of a staircase, a flurry of apologies, a dawning realization of the identity of the other individual. She was captivating in her chaos, a myriad of contradictions that culminated in a bright young witch the likes of which Croix had never seen. They had each cleaned up their respective messes, grabbing papers and books off the floor. Croix took an extra textbook with her to the dormitory that night, in the hopes that she would maybe run into her again.

Chariot du Nord was an enigma. Despite the underclassman's obvious talent in complex magic, she blundered around in mediocrity, unable -- or unwilling -- to understand her true potential. Her name was something grandiose, godlike, and unreachable -- the chariot of the north -- a name too big for someone like her to fit into. A walking hurricane of a girl that tried to please anyone unfortunate enough to step in her way. She spent her time practicing petty performance magic instead of doing her classwork, and preferred the company of the stars to textbooks. Yet Croix was utterly captivated by her actions, her presentations, her words. They gravitated towards each other like the pull of two stars, locked in each other's orbit. That summer, Croix no longer dreaded her return to Luna Nova.

A smattering of freckles dusted across a nose that scrunched up cutely when she concentrated. Eyes that shone like the stars when she envisioned her future, dancing across the stage in a beam of moonlight. Hair that sparkled and surrounded her like a broken halo in the sun when she performed stunts on her broom. Chariot, the only person in the whole entire world that would make Croix's name sound like a prayer, a symphonic, monosyllabic note to which she would phrase her hesitant question.

"Um, Croix, may you please help me on number five?"

The subtle roll of an r. A pleasant raise in inflection as she ended her name with an open vowel. The way her mouth formed a cute little “oh” when she said it that made Croix immediately want to see that expression in a wildly different context. She had stared at her pleadingly with those sparkling red orbs, the dim light of the library reflecting from her pupils in the late hours of the night. The invariable mundanity of a question during the day, leading to grandiose projectures and theories of the meaning of life late into the night. She was bright, shining like a lone star in the dim mediocrity of their student body. Her actions and words made it seem otherwise, often having trouble rebuking her own claims at the validity of showmanship, and being unable to fend off her bullies.

The juxtaposition of sounds tumbling out of the girl's mouth as she stumbled towards her, bright red hair spiked in awkward directions from her impromptu afternoon nap. The way she phrased conjectures in that slightly out-of-order way typical of romance-language speakers, always punctuating her English expressions with an apologetic “how do you say” or a pathetic flurry of semi-interpretive hand signals.

It wasn't as if the French girl was single-handedly trying to infuse Croix’s name with romance and meaning, the pronunciation simply a byproduct of her rural northern French accent. Anything she said was utterly captivating, in that lilted, low voice of hers, conspiratorial in the intimate space created between two people. Gravelly and grumpy in the early hours before breakfast, when no one but Croix got to see her scowling at the audacity of the offending daylight.

Chariot was a project, a mystery for Croix to solve. The amount of things she could do were endless with that much energy and raw potential; Chariot, a live wire of magic emanating from a brush of fingers, a pat on the shoulders in between classes. Her hair was like a ball of charged fire atop her head as she stumbled her way through academic halls and flew across the broom field. She would save her from her own petty performance magic. She would make Chariot see her true potential.

It was Croix's final year. Each witch had deviated further and further from each other’s interests, Croix spending almost all of her living hours working on research projects on futurist magitronics research, and Chariot finding herself with less and less company as the few people who humored her late night performances began to mature. Despite her best efforts, Croix ached at the loss of intimacy between her best friend. Her quest for fully understanding a juncture between magic and technology thrust her into the world of late-night research and frustratingly long lab sessions that led her down a path of more and more resistance from Luna Nova's staunch traditionalists. At her insistence, Chariot had begun spending more and more hours studying by herself, causing a rift to form between the two girls. It was one of the increasingly rare times they had seen each other during the school year that Croix truly fell in love with her own name.

They had retired to the blue team room, Croix perched on the bed, coiled as if ready for flight, and Chariot sprawled out on the floor tracing patterns in the ceiling with her wand. They had escaped there from the library after three witches in her advanced magical theories class had tracked her down with a chorus of insidious, avian-sounding tones of “Croix! Croix!” intended to garner her attention. Chariot had asked her for help too, with that hopeful, honey-laced tone of hers -- still yet unsure, timid and afraid of Croix’s rejection -- and she accepted, not truly aware of the depth of her own affections. But that was hours ago, and Chariot had since abandoned her studies in favor of casting colorful spells that lit up the room in their ephemeral moment of life. She, too, had given up trying to study, but maintained the facade in the futile hope that Chariot would maybe follow by example and catch up on the work she had missed last week due to her impromptu trip to the infirmary. She had been sneaking furtive glances at the younger witch for the past twenty minutes, watching as she completed a particularly difficult transfiguration spell only for the purpose of transforming a nearby textbook into a flying mass of paper cranes. As they alighted on her person, Chariot let out a small giggle when they fluttered their wings and tried to take flight again. The same sentence of Croix’s _Physics of Objects in Animation_ that she had been reading for the last half hour greeted her again as she hid her face back in her book.

She set her light reading down onto her lap when she felt the dip of the mattress indicating Chariot’s presence. As she lowered her book she was faced with the intensity of bright red eyes staring back at her with some secret, inexplicable emotion. It felt like cotton was stuffed in her ears, making her dizzy as she watched Chariot roll over onto her stomach, toes stretched en pointe towards the ceiling before curling in on themselves. There was something in her bright red eyes that suggested less than innocent intentions.

“Hi.” she grinned playfully up at the purple haired girl, chin propped up by her hands.

“Hi yourself.” Chariot snickered at Croix’s monotone retort and the subsequent roll of her eyes. She had sat up, restless, and pulled the book off Croix's lap where she put it haphazardly on the bookshelf, out of place. Croix watched Chariot as she slid the book in with its peers, watching her hair reflect and warp the dim colors of the dorm room. Their silence was a comfortable one, cultivated from a year of sororal intimacy. A thought bloomed forth at the forefront of her mind, a deep seated need to give Chariot an idea of the depths of her own capacity.

“That was a very impressive spell you cast back there,” Croix spoke, her voice piercing the comfortable silence like a knife. “Not a lot of your classmates would be able to achieve that, even in senior year.” she felt silly telling Chariot the truth, words of praise foreign and sour in her mouth. More than seventeen years of her life and the concept of a compliment was completely foreign to her brain; useless, frivolous thoughts that shouldn’t need acknowledgement. Yet her second year had brought Chariot’s confidence to an all-time low, to the point where even Croix found her destructive tendencies unhealthy (Croix noticing anything was a miracle in itself).

Chariot blushed scarlet at the praise. Her playful demeanor was replaced by something far more bashful and tentative. “O-oh! I didn't know you were watching me,” she stuttered, tearing her eyes away from Croix to study her sheets instead, thumbing at the frayed edge of her skirt. Her tone and her insecurity of her own abilities caused Croix's streak of protectiveness to rear its ugly head.

She grasped Chariot's hands clutching at the hem of her skirt and pulled them into her lap, brow furrowed. “Have the pink team girls been bullying you again? Because I’ve already hexed Ashley's dildo into a newt last week and I swear to God I'll do it again,” she growled, earning a stuttering laugh from the still red-faced girl in front of her. Ashley had made the fatal mistake of having the audacity to make Chariot cry within hearing range of Croix that day, igniting a firey strain of vengeful behavior that ended with her screaming through the dormitory halls.

Chariot chewed on her lip, nose screwed up in a cute little expression of hesitant uncertainty. “N-no, it's not that,” she trailed off, obviously holding back her confession.

Croix was confused. She knew many girls and even teachers gave Chariot a hard time, but it wasn't as if she was any less of a capable witch. She wished she could show her the extent of her abilities: her talent in transfiguration and astronomy, her gift of communication with familiars. Some witches wouldn't even dare to attempt the things she could accomplish with ease, a nontraditional set of powerful magic skills rare in the witching world. A surge of jealousy rose in her throat like bile, but she pushed it down. Chariot opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again.

“It's just that you never compliment anyone else, and…” if it was even possible to turn redder at her train of thought, she managed to do so. What could possibly be so --

 

Oh. _Oh_.

 

The room seemed clearer, brighter as she understood the meaning behind Chariot’s words.  

“Do you like it when I compliment you? Do you like when I tell you you've been good?” So that's what this was. A year of dodging praise and positive criticism, a year and a half of tearing herself down at her meaningless, inconsequential mistakes to the point of panic attacks in the library halls. In hindsight, she should have seen this sooner, but knowledge was its own sweet reward, and this was something she was sure she would cherish. Compliments no longer seemed frivolous and unnecessary. She moved closer to where the girl was sitting, positively vibrating with manic energy. A vicious smile crept up onto Croix's features, charged with intent. Chariot's expression warped into an off-color imitation of distress. 

“Oh, Croix, stop,” she pleaded, both embarrassed and terribly aroused. Croix's smirk only grew wider at the way her name fell from the younger girl’s lips, a mouthful of trilled r's tumbling from her throat. It made her feel like she was being filled with mulled wine, warm and tingly and intoxicating at the core of her stomach. Impulse control abandoned, she leaned over at the column of pale skin that was her best friend's throat, nose pressing up against her neck.

She mouthed at Chariots neck, eliciting from the girl an honest to god _whimper_. It was probably the second hottest sound Croix had ever heard in her life. Her glasses bumped up against the underside of Chariot’s jaw, cutting into the bridge of her nose. She let go of chariot’s hands to place them on her thighs, gripping the flesh there to stabilize herself.

“Say it again,” Croix insisted, breathlessly, needing to hear her own name tumble from the girl’s lips as if it was as essential as the air she breathed.

“W-what?”

She was impatient, and didn't want to admit to her own weakness. She bit her neck to elicit a strangled noise from the girl and growled. “My name. Say my name again.”

“Croix, I--”

“Good girl,” Croix purred, husky and low, the phrase feeling novel to her own ears. She almost felt silly, spilling out phrases reserved for animals; but its effect on the red-haired girl was immediate, hands twitching and flush spreading to her ears. She kissed up Chariot’s neck until she reached the space between her jaw and her ear, placing her nose there and breathing in.

Chariot was already practically falling apart from the exploitation of her weakness. Croix watched her unconsciously press her legs together, a warm pool of heat collecting beneath her stomach at the action. She put her hands on Chariot's thighs and slid up, up, upward, until--

“ _Croix!_ ” Chariot practically squeaked, her voice raising an octave as roaming hands found their place inside suspiciously purple underwear. She retracted her cold fingers to a safer place on the inside of her thigh, drawing circles and patterns from her motion physics textbook on the inside of Chariot’s leg. They had conducted this symphony before, this gentle equation, yet neither girl knew their part, still raw and unexperienced in their roles as partners.

“Are you wearing my underwear again?” She stroked the soft fabric of the patterned boxer briefs on the girl below her and smirked. Chariot looked away briefly, eyes flitting to a point on the ceiling beyond her shoulder. Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded briefly, uncharacteristically shy at the undivided attention Croix was giving her. Some small part of her felt bad, knowing that her complete attention was a deviation from the norm, but she quenched the feeling in favor of focusing on the present. An intrusive thought rose unbidden from her id, something dark and deliciously possessive.

“Do you like wearing my clothes to show you’re mine?”

She received a strangled noise in return. Hesitation. Then, a furious nod into the mattress.

Croix palmed the pale expanse of Chariot’s stomach, brushing the fine hairs adorning the hard planes of her abs below her belly button, slowly lifting up her shirt. She tore her eyes away from Chariot’s freckle-studded canvas to meet her eyes, suddenly serious. Hesitancy tore at her skin like a thousand microscopic pinpricks as she stopped her hands from playing with the red hair she found there; she could feel Chariot’s heart racing like a frightened rabbit, breaths stuttering out of her chest.

She reigned in her feelings in a moment of clarity, voice shaky and hoarse. “We don’t have to do this, you know.” Stupid, stupid of her to assume -- she mentally reeled back from what she was doing, yanking her hands away from too-hot flesh.

The phrase seemed to revitalize Chariot, a sense of ownership over her own actions, and she brought her hands to Croix’s face, thumbing the curves of her cheek. A long breath, eyes fluttering closed. A sigh, of resignation or of resolution, she wasn’t sure. “I know.”

She opened her eyes and they stared at each other a moment in silence, each girl out of breath and panting. In the intimate space under the curtain of Croix’s hair, the two girls searched each other for a sign of hesitation. Then, slowly, Chariot nodded once, twice, until her head shook up and down like a particularly animated bobblehead doll. Dizzy, drunk with emotion, Croix reached up to still her head with her free hand. Chariot nuzzled into the touch, looking up at her with dark eyes.

“Kiss me.”

Croix leaned down and pressed her lips to Chariot, their noses bumping together for a moment before settling into a comfortable rhythm. Chariot opened her mouth slightly, an invitation Croix gladly took as she unbuttoned her shirt and thumbed the underside of Chariot's nondescript purple sports bra. In turn, Chariot raised her hands to Croix's own shirt, shakily fumbling with the buttons and loosening her tie. She paused a moment to take off her own shirt, discarding it over the bed and stretching out her body, clad in a plain red bra.

“Something, something you said about wearing my colors?” Chariot teased back, raising an eyebrow at the girl adjusting her glasses, not meeting her eyes. She sat up on her elbows, chewing her lip in thought, before reciting in a sing-song voice,

“Completely oblivious Croix,

Clad in a shiny red bra,

Scared to admit her feelings,

Because she thinks she's going too far.”

“Oi, _muto_ ,” Croix hissed, red at the playful sound of her name and the implications of the rhyme. She barrelled back into Chariot, knocking her back over onto the sheets to press her lips up against her again. Chariot moaned, creating an opening for Croix to taste the inside of the other girl’s mouth. Chariot draped her arms around Croix’s neck, threading her fingers through long lavender hair. They disconnected for a moment to catch their breath, Croix hovering her hands over the curves of Chariot’s body. _Be gentle, be careful, be gentle_ echoed like a broken record inside her head as she peered at the elastic of her bra straps with apprehension.

“May I?”

Chariot huffs, the movement scattering hairs across her face. “You’ve seen me naked before.”

“But-”

“And you can’t say it was in a different context, because it really wasn’t.”

Croix rolled her eyes and lifted up the bottom of her bra and let it snap back in response. Chariot's yelp quickly turned into a hum of approval as Croix slid her bra up over her head and onto the floor, leaving the redheaded girl bare-chested below her. She returned the favor by reaching behind Croix and unclasping her bra, sliding the straps down her shoulders. Immediately she felt a wave of self-conscious nausea at the idea that Chariot, her exemplary shining star, would _see_ her comparatively plain mortal form and be moved to apathy, or worse, disgust. Chariot looked her over up and down regardless, blushing prettily to her ears. She could feel her taking in the expanse of her, the swell of her breasts and the unadorned plane of her stomach, hands running gently down her sides. An unreadable expression.

Croix was a little nonplussed. “What.” A shaky not-question at the look on the other girl’s face.

“You're so much prettier than me,” Chariot revealed, a hint of envy in her self-depreciation.

How could she say that, with her slim, athletic figure, and her already muscle-toned arms? Even in her teens, her figure cut a delicious shape, angles and hard lines of her arms and back juxtaposed with the soft planes of her face and thighs. A visible expression of shock must have crossed her features, because Chariot suddenly found something far more interesting than Croix’s face on the nightstand beside the bed, and she crossed her arms as if to ward off Croix’s thoughts. They both sat in silence, bare-chested and panting, lost in their own thoughts.

“Hey. Hey.” It was Chariot who brought them back.

“Look at me, Croix. Look at me,” she gently guided Croix's face to hers with her hands, red searching green. Glasses were pulled off of her face, and she blinked, trying to refocus on the girl in front of her. She felt her face heat up as she was subjected to Chariot's probing stare, and had to rear herself away. She placed open-mouthed kisses on the tops of Chariot's collarbones, down to her stomach, where she rubbed her nose in the fine hair surrounding her navel.

“Are you going to be good for me?” she peered up at the other girl, waiting for the answer to her unspoken question.

“ _Oui_ ,” she breathed, the raw intensity of her open expression making Croix's body warm in response.

She'd never done this before, the taste of Chariot novel and bittersweet on her tongue. Every one of her senses was overtaken by Chariot’s presence, a living weight both on her body and mind, the sense of Chariot encompassing her everywhere. She began slow and unsure, making small shapes with her tongue.

“Oh,” an expression filled with wonderment and surprise. Hips stuttered into her nose, suddenly and ephemerally stifling her senses.

“Ah-Oh, Croix,” she tangled her fingers into purple hair and screwed her eyes shut. Her breath hitched, a stifled moan seeping through her fingers as she clamped her free hand over her mouth to keep from alerting the adjacent dorms.

(It was quiet hours, after all.)

Feeling malevolent, she stopped a moment, pausing to place a kiss over the flesh of her inner thigh (and to breathe, but she wasn’t going to tell anyone that). Hands tugged insistently at her hair, pulling her face up to look at a distressed and confused Chariot. 

“Wh-why did you stop?”

Her hand twitched towards herself, and Croix reached out to intertwine her fingers with her own.

“Would you like me to continue?” She cheekily bit back a smile, looking as innocent as Croix was capable of between Chariot’s legs.

“Yes,” she grumbled, shifting under her impatiently.

“That’s not very polite.”

“Well neither are you, but you don’t see me- ah!” she yelped as she was nipped at the apex of her thigh.

“What do you say when you want something from someone?”

“Please, Croix, please fuck me,” she deadpanned, emphatically rolling her r’s. The effect was ruined by the way she blushed at the sound of her own words, turning her head away from where Croix was grinning like a cat.

“Aw, it’s no fun if you aren’t in the spirit of it,” she sighed, teasing her fingers up Chariot’s leg to watch her microexpressions. “Besides, it’s not sexy when you purposefully try to sound like a lawnmower.” When she reached the top of her leg, she teased the edge of her before moving back down to her knee. When she reached Chariot again, she pushed her finger against her and watched the girl squirm. She retreated a third time, and started the process over, determined to win.

Eventually, Chariot broke out into a whimper, unable to take the teasing and let out a tiny plea. Croix’s grin stretched wider as soon as she heard her resolve crumble. She pressed her knuckle against her and watched Chariot buck her hips against her hand.

“What?”

“Oh, Croix, _please_ ,” she keened, breathless and needy above her. They both turned scarlet at her outburst, Croix turned on by her desperate pleading. She returned to her place between Chariot’s legs, feeling uncomfortably sticky herself. Unsure of what to do, she tried something else, much to Chariot’s immediate discomfort -- she immediately tugged at her hair.

“Nononono, not there, d-do what you were doing before-- ” she gasped as Croix corrected herself and began drawing the alphabet with her tongue.

“I’m close--” Croix zeroed in on her clit, swirling her tongue in a spiral.

She let out a string of obscenities in French as she came, smothering Croix into her with her iron grip on her hair.

After a moment, Croix crawled back on top of her, kissing her again, reveling in the sounds she made as she tasted herself on Croix’s lips before disconnecting with a wet sound. She watched as Chariot fluttered her eyes closed, turning her head away in some expression of shame. Frightened, Croix reached out to comfort her by awkwardly patting her shoulder.

“Uh, are you okay-” _Did you mess up were you too forceful did she want it she_ **_hates_ ** _you now--_

“You weren’t supposed to know that turned me on,” she said, in a small voice, inspecting her slightly trembling hands and avoiding Croix’s eyes. Her expression softened and she leaned over to look into Chariot’s face, smug once more.

“Aw, babe-- OW,” she reeled back as Chariot punched her in the boob and then got a face full of pillow. “HEY.”

“I’m not your babe,” she called, as she rolled over faster than Croix could catch her, scrambling to the corner of the mattress.

“Come back here you piece of--” she managed to grab Chariot’s ankle, resulting in a high pitched squeal and a foot inches away from hitting her face. She dragged her back, Chariot making struggling noises and throwing her discarded shirt at her. Knowing full well that Chariot was stronger than her, she wrestled her to submission, pulling her hands above her head and holding each of her wrists with a hand.

“Stop, stop it, or I’m going to tickle the shit out of you,” Croix warned darkly. Chariot stuck her tongue out at her, then with full force swung them around so she was on top with a smug grin, clamping both Croix’s wrists in one iron grip.

“Fear me, for some unforeseen day in the future, I will exact my revenge!” She flicked the tip of Croix’s nose.

“Oooh, scary. I’ll keep that in mind whenever I see you tripping over yourself in the hallway. Getting threats from you is like being frightened by a kitten.” She was entranced by Chariot’s eyes flicking between hers and her mouth, indecisive on how to proceed. The gears turned visibly behind her eyes before she was spurred by some benevolent thought to bend down to capture her lips in her own, heady and sensual as her free hand roamed Croix’s body, reaching under her underwear to remind them both she still hadn’t been attended to. Her fingers slid in embarrassingly easily, and she felt her face heat up at Chariot’s feigned surprise.

“All your big talk and you are still just as excited as I was, hm?”

She was thankfully not as teasing as Croix, fumbling through the motions in the awkward way someone not yet experienced with their partner would, before settling into a rhythm that suited them both.

Croix stuttered her hips into Chariot’s fingers, desperate and unable to break free from her grip. Chariot bit down onto her neck, eliciting an embarrassingly high pitched moan from her that turned into breathless panting as the spot was soothed and kissed over, and her thumb traced over her clit.

She moaned Chariot’s name into her shoulder as she came, hoarse and breathy, riding her fingers to completion.

They both fell into the mattress, slumped over, chests heaving and slick with exertion. Chariot started laughing as she caught her breath, running her hands down her face. Croix curled into her, brushing her slick bangs away from her eyes and curling towards the other girl’s body. She smelled comfortable; like a fall day when it's just rained on recently cut grass and you've stayed in for the day in a favorite sweater and made yourself a mug of tea. She breathed in the sweat-tinged scent of her from where Chariot lay, drawing lazy spell patterns into her stomach with her finger, listening to her heartbeat.

“You really are an impressive witch,” Croix said, noncommittally. She ran her tongue along her teeth, trying to commit the flavor of her to memory.

“Nooooo, stop, I'm tired,” Chariot groaned and shifted beneath her, rubbing her palms into her eyes.

She lifted her head to scrutinize the other girl, squinting to try and focus on the red and cream blur. “I'm being serious.” She traced the faded line of a scar across Chariot's hip with the gentle precision of a scientist, running her finger across the slightly discolored sliver of flesh. She pinched it for a moment, before moving on. “You can’t just assume that I’m saying nice things about you for sex,” she sighed, a little offended. Her chest rose and fell with the force of a deflating balloon.

“I-I guess…” she started, clearly bothered with the direct praise, and not yet comfortable with Croix knowing her secret.  She looked at her hands before turning her gaze to the dark window. “I should go.”

She started to get up to collect her shirt and her sports bra when Croix threw her leaden arm over her. “You can stay,” she said, internally cringing at the way that sounded. “I-if you’d like,” she added. “It’s beyond curfew.”

Chariot cocked her head.

“What about your roommates?”

“They already know we’re … sleeping together.” A grimace. “I swore them to secrecy -- they need me for their Advanced Philosophy of Magicks homework anyways.”

“Oh… okay.” She sounded hesitant, mulling it over in her brain, while Croix prayed to Jennifer she’d say yes. _Third time’s the charm._

“Besides, you probably need to…. take a shower….” _With me_ , the horny part of her brain supplied gleefully, still on full libido with Chariot shirtless. She looked away, reaching blindly for her glasses to hide her reaction.

“Alright,” she decided, a little too meekly for Croix’s liking. She dragged Chariot back down onto the bed and brushed her hair out of her face.

“Hey. Listen to me.” Chariot nodded too much and Croix stilled her head. She gathered her breath to speak.

“You mean a lot. I mean. You’re important. Yooooouuuuu arrrrrreeeee important……. To me. Yeah.” She exhaled dramatically, and nodded at her own confession. “Plus I think you getting off to me giving you compliments is super hot.” Chariot made an indignant noise, but Croix only squished her cheeks together. “Shut up and know this. I like you, and I don’t think we’re friends with benefits. You’re allowed to be vulnerable.” Chariot looked down, red eyes shining with unshed tears. “I don’t want to hurt you... unless you’re into that.” She let go of Chariot’s face and pushed her glasses back up her nose. “You’re the only one who bothers to pronounce my name correctly, which is also kind of hot,” she rambled, turning red for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

“Wow, that was…. Genuinely touching, coming from me. I’m proud of myself.”

Chariot sniffed and rushed in for a chest-crushing hug, rubbing her wet face into Croix’s neck. “Thank you,” she sniffled, and Croix tried to pat her reassuringly on the back. Her distress made rage bubble underneath the surface of her skin, rage against the professors, against the students, against everyone who has lowered Chariot this deep into self-doubt. The unfairness of it all, the bitter taste of her own failures of _never being there_ mixed in with the frustration of knowing the way the schoolgirls treat her for being different, crashed down into a deep, sudden unrestrained feeling of fury. She reciprocated the embrace, fingers tangling possessively into the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m still here.”

Despite their increased distance throughout the school year, she felt more comfortable than ever in Chariot’s arms -- the embrace of her constellations, her star of the north. Magitronics may have consumed her, but it was Chariot that brought her back to earth, back to the now, home to Luna Nova and to herself.

“Let’s go take a shower.”

**Author's Note:**

> No I will not be taking constructive criticism on how her name is pronounced, this is it, have a good day.  
> I've been sitting on this for about a month and a half and instead of studying for my midterms I decided to finish it so here you go.
> 
> ALSO EDIT IM REALLY PISSED OFF THAT THIS IS ONLY 23 WORDS AWAY FROM 6K... FOR THE SAKE OF MY SANITY ITS A 6K WORD FIC
> 
> Also YES I am working on chapter three of Fatalism I have just been busy with school, please take this porn with feelings as my apology.. if u want to follow my drawings im quantumsketchbook on tumblr but no I don't post naughty stuff there


End file.
